Global attributes

What global attributes (i.e., attributes from the root group of the netCDF file) to copy to the public file are defined by the [global_attributes] section. This section contains two lists of strings:

• must_copy lists the names of attributes that must be available in the private netCDF file, or an error is raised.
• copy_if_present lists the names of attributes to copy if available in the private netCDF file, but to not raise an error for if missing.

An abbreviated example from the TCCON standard configuration is:

[global_attributes]
must_copy = [
    "source",
    "description",
    "file_creation",
]
copy_if_present = [
    "long_name",
    "location",
]

At present, there is no way to manipulate attributes' values during the copying process, nor add arbitrary attributes. In general, attributes should be added to the private netCDF file, then copied to the public file. This ensures that attributes are consistent between the two files. However, in the future we may add the ability to define some special cases.